


of melancholy & gin

by silver_and_exact



Category: Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (2013)
Genre: Crack, F/M, Gen, I'm an idiot, M/M, My First Work in This Fandom, Work In Progress, but do you think i'm funny?, classics gone wild, derailed satire, occasional intentional anachronism, seriously what am i writing, what am I writing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-05
Updated: 2016-12-02
Packaged: 2018-02-03 18:43:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 30
Words: 10,881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1754411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silver_and_exact/pseuds/silver_and_exact
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of interconnected paragraph-long vignettes featuring intense ruminations on Modern Life, Tom's racism, and Jordan Baker's honed and glistening biceps, among other exciting thematic elements.  Basically a retelling of The Great Gatsby.  My English professors would've been so ashamed of me.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Nick Carraway: reliable narrator(?) / the Buchanans:  trendy boredom-'n-racism dream team

**prologue**

* * *

As Nick Carraway’s father had always reminded him in times of minor inconvenience, he was an utterly fortunate and dazzlingly milk-skinned young man.  As such, it was only natural that he should be exceptionally skilled in the art of tolerance and impartiality.  However, in the months that followed his relocation to West Egg, New York, and his eventual phoenix-like rising from that egg and into a reality-hardened stock broker with nerves of tempered steel, Nick would face a test of his god-given demeanor that would leave him a crumpled husk of a man.  He would begin to question everyone and everything, for that seemed to Nick to be the most sensible thing to do after coming face to face with such boundless tragedy.  But every rule has at least one exception, and this was Nick's: he would never question Gatsby.  Gatsby, the greatest man he had ever met.  Gatsby, who had died in that terribly unfair way…

* * *

 

**part i**

 

Tom Buchanan looked as if he had absorbed several siblings in utero in order to attain his massive stature.  As he led Nick through the cavernous halls of the Buchanan domicile, Nick privately thought that he looked and acted as if he was compensating for something; not necessarily a sexual shortcoming, mind you, though that wasn’t completely out of the question as an explanation for his behavior (and for that matter, as an explanation for the entire framework of his life).  Nick sighed deeply, recalling his characteristic impartiality, as Tom showed him his vast collection of things that used to belong to other rich people but now belonged to the Buchanans.

 

* * *

 

 

 

“I have a baby,” murmured Daisy conversationally, supine atop an enormous silk divan.  Its cushions swallowed her frail, nearly transparent body like the maw of something mythological.  It was well known throughout East Egg that the Buchanans imported a fresh crop of silkworms bi-monthly to infest the furniture, weaving in additional fibers and maintaining its softness and intrinsic monetary value.  “I don’t rightly remember what sort of baby, but it’s been around for quite a while now.  I call it Pammy."

 

* * *

 

 

Somewhere along the line, the brunch had gotten a bit out of hand.  “I am not  _ hulking _ ,” Tom roared, the muscles in his arms barely restrained by his criminally form-fitting equestrian uniform.  They writhed like moray eels beneath the high-gloss surface of his golden-brown tan.  Thick ropes of saliva tethered his devastatingly straight, white teeth.  Tom shuttled the cut glass lemonade pitcher toward his guests' cups like a star player in some newly minted sport, and Nick's glass quickly overflowed in a strange, borderline-incomprehensible ejaculation metaphor, drenching his brand new cream-colored flannel suit.  Coarse granules of sugar flaked from the peaks of his lapels.  "…Thank you," he said meekly.  “I want to eat ice cream made out of diamonds,” mumbled Daisy, insensate, "I wonder, is there such a thing, Tom?"  Her posh boredom radiated outward like a supernova, escaping the boundaries the patio and stunning the parasol-shaded passers-by, whose smiles collapsed into expressions of aloof disinterest, inspired by her example.  Nick began to cry, but no one noticed, and if they did, they were too egocentric to publicly give his anguish their full attention.  “I hate the blacks,” Tom thundered disconsolately.

 

 

 

 

 


	2. Jordan says a thing / the mysterious Mr. Gatsby invites Nick to a swingin' party.

" _Darling,_ there's someone you simply _must_ meet," exclaimed Jordan Baker in a whiskey-laden rasp.  "His name is Gatsby and he throws these terribly symbolic parties all the time.  Symbolism is very in, you know," she explained seriously, her delicate eyebrows crushed together like a set of silken pliers.  This was very important to her, Nick realized with a start, and though the harshness of her voice aged and masculinized her in a way that was quite unbecoming, he leaned forward considerately, feigning absorption.  "And they're not just symbols," Jordan continued exuberantly, overturning a lamp with her wildly gesticulating arms, which were breaking traditional gender barriers with their feminine yet unmistakeably powerful muscularity.  "Sometimes..." she paused, and Nick clung to her words breathlessly—he wasn't even sure if he was pretending anymore—"they're _motifs_.  Themes, even.  Imagine that!"  "Who's this Gatsby fellow?" said Daisy very unconvincingly, her eyes darting from face to face in a desperate projection of ignorance.

 

* * *

 

"I was actually invited, you know," babbled Nick for the sixth time that evening.  He was shockingly sober and definitely hadn't had anything to drink.  "Don't you get it?" a girl in a shapeless dress made entirely of pearls said huffily, rolling her eyes.  "It's not _cool_ to be invited.  We _freeload,_ Carraway."  "But isn't that terribly impolite?" Nick inquired, bewildered and suddenly aware of the insidious onset of a migraine.  "Well, Gatsby's a goddamn Marxist," the girl tittered delicately, "so I don't give a fuck."  The sound of her laughter was incongruously wholesome, like distant church bells tolling on a temperate August evening.  Nick looked on miserably as she Charlestoned off into the night, glimmering like some primeval, untouchable idol.


	3. Nick meets Gatsby / Nick & Gatsby talk philosophy & Get Real / Jordan gets on Nick's nerves a little

"This Gatsby fellow must be a bit of a weirdo, spending all this money just to try to make people like him,” Nick remarked to the mysterious and extremely dapper stranger conspiratorially.  “Old sport, I’m Gatsby,” the man said mock-casually, in the defeated yet strangely upbeat manner of a hard drinker who doesn’t care anymore about much of anything, forcing Nick to instantly reassess his cryptic host. “Then what’s all this about?” Nick replied, trying hard to rebound from his faux-pas without seeming embarrassed by his behavior, which was very judgmental and thus quite shamefully out of character. “Buy me a drink and maybe I’ll tell you,” said Gatsby flirtatiously.  “But why on earth would i have to buy you anything?” said Nick quizzically.  Overhead, extravagant fireworks blossomed like toxic flowers, violently imprinting their afterimages on the night.

 

* * *

  
  
“Daisy is such a babe,” Nick smoldered, smashing a champagne flute in his fervor.  “If she wasn’t my cousin, I’d bone the life out of her.  Hell, I still might,” he declared rebelliously, loosening his tie, which was erotically candy-colored.  “Me too,” muttered Gatsby wistfully, staring out at that goddamn green light.  “But what is the majority of sexuality but a thwarted attempt at transcendence, a series of smoke and mirrors that distances us further and further from any real chance at enlightenment?  As Foucault said, ‘we demand that sex speak the truth, and that it tell us _our_ truth, or rather, the deeply buried truth of that truth about ourselves which we think we possess in our immediate consciousness’.  And furthermore, what are we but small, insignificant men riddled with unseen wounds of the spirit, deadened by alcohol and the weight of our own existential ruin, which pads unerringly toward us like a fleet-footed predator in the night?”  Nick sighed.  “You’re completely right, of course.  But wasn’t it fun to pretend for a while that everything is normal and okay?"

 

* * *

 

“I heard Gatsby’s Satan’s son and Gavrilo Princip’s pen pal,” Jordan Baker quipped smartly, flexing her nine-iron-honed biceps.  “Well, I like him,” Nick murmured nonchalantly, reclining on an ermine chaise-longue and sipping luxuriantly at a sloe gin fizz, “I find his rags-to-riches story rather.... charming.”  Jordan pouted exaggeratedly in response, her face contorting into an unconvincing approximation of human emotion.  “Nicholas!  I thought you liked _me_.  My rags are my femininity and my riches are my unexpected ruthlessness and athletic prowess.”  Nick sighed and ran a hand across his face, his boyish good looks already beginning to fade as a result of an as-yet brief yet sure-to-be-spectacular life of excess.  The crows’ feet in the corners of his eyes flexed their talons presciently, waiting for the opportune moment to reveal themselves at last.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok, so the Foucault quote is a straight-up anachronism. i don't think Foucault was even born at this point in time. i don't know, i just wanted gatsby to have read The History of Sexuality, okay?


	4. a cationary tale regarding the hazards of material gain / a shocking confession by Gatsby

When the revelry ended there were at least three murders to cover up, and that was a conservative estimate.  The bourgeois excess of Gatsby’s parties had reached a pulse-pounding crescendo.  World leaders swigging brandy cut with a dark, viscous substance that was rumored to be human blood were laughing the sleazy laughter of the unconscionably moneyed side-by-side with debutantes and robber barons and snake-oil salesmen and wild-eyed pre-televangelists.  One of the Astors had gone into cardiac arrest during a botched attempt to snort some of the gold dust that Gatsby was currently potting his plants in, much to the chagrin of both his gardener and his in-house EMT.  When the tropical palms inevitably shriveled and died, Gatsby had both the gold and the plants replaced immediately.  It represented the transience of life and the failure of material gains to truly nurture or provide lasting sustenance.  Somewhere in the vastness of Gatsby’s mansion, a band of tipsy teenage call girls dressed as strangely sexualized animals and food items dance-marathoned through the cavernous halls for hours on end, eventually collapsing from dehydration.  In the library, the man known only as Owl Eyes cried, overcome by the earth-shattering realness of the books, until each of his organs ruptured softly, like small cotton-filled balloons.  Over all of this madness presided the inescapable gaze of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg, the hollow entrepreneurial god of a modern world devoid of sympathy, understanding, and reliable narration.   _I am the last of the honest men_ , Nick ruminated, brooding over his cocktail, _and this trait shall die with me in this beautiful, terrible purgatory.  We are all truly alone, and any evidence to the contrary is inadmissible as hearsay._

  
 

* * *

 

  
Like it or not, the Jazz Age was winding to an end.  Brass instruments screamed jazzily from their tired brass throats, and the poor languished in the Valley of Ashes, locked in the Mobius strip of their false hopes and numb assembly line workdays.  The futility was utterly dizzying.  That night at Gatsby’s party, a troupe of traveling circus performers held a lackluster orgy at gunpoint on the front lawn, and Klipspringer looked on, wielding a tommy gun and cackling like Beelzebub.  Daisy began to cry, overwhelmed by metaphor, and Tom scoffed like a total douchebag.  “I think maybe I love you,” admitted Gatsby drunkenly to Nick.  Nick swooned, but was quickly revived by a vial of bathtub gin cleverly employed as smelling salts.  “I just want to get in my goddamn hydroplane with you and fly so high into the stratosphere that we suffocate or freeze to death, because nothing can matter in the precise way in which we want it to matter.  This world has flatlined and the American dream is a lie.”  “I feel the same way,” Nick declared solemnly, clasping his hands.


	5. a death in the family / the tragedy of the Beautiful Fools / Gatsby's fevered war flashbacks /  Nick gets drunk

“I’ve known your wife, old sport,” Gatsby said coolly, waylaying the ice in his highball with a swizzle stick.  “Sexually.”  “Miscegenation!” screamed Tom, red-faced and inaccurate—it was the worst word he could think of, though Gatsby's race was unspecified and rather nebulous.  “Are we even really alive?” digressed Gatsby abruptly, staring out the window.  Back in East Egg, Daisy’s daughter, unattended, was drowning in a large vat of imported perfume that had been forgotten deep in the recesses of the Buchanans’ labyrinthine home.  Slowly, aromatically, her small hand receded into the ambergris.        

 

* * *

 

 

“I want my daughter to be a beautiful fool,” Daisy shrieked passionately, unaware of the child’s untimely death several days prior to this declaration.  “If she turns out smart, people will subconsciously equate that with ugliness no matter what her physical appearance happens to be.”  “That’s so messed up,” Nick said uncomfortably, eyeing the door and ultimately sidling out of the room.  He had a hot date with Gatsby and he was weary of Daisy’s entitled prattling.  “I need some laudanum,” Daisy sighed, heaving herself theatrically onto her velvet coverlet, rapt in psychic anguish.  “And a cigarette.  And I want it to be more acceptable for women to wear pants, but I’m scared to wear them myself while they’re still commonly regarded as menswear.”

 

* * *

 

During the war, Gatsby had killed an uncountable number of men.  When he slept, their ghosts crept into his enormous home and left misshapen tracks in the flour he sprinkled around the bed to track them.  Gatsby found this strangely comforting.  The ghosts pooled in the ectoplasmic glow of the green light on the far off (but not completely unattainably far off) pier, possessing the mansion’s partygoers and compelling their not-entirely-unwilling bodies to commit a bevy of socially unacceptable—yet not necessarily inherently morally reprehensible—acts.  “I’m not in love with anyone,” lamented Gatsby, backpedaling, “What’s the point?”  “It’s okay,” whispered the many voices of the ghosts consolingly, “there doesn’t have to be a point.”  Gatsby groaned and pulled the silken covers over his sorrow-addled head.  Outside, the party raged like a monsoon, desperate and unstoppable.

 

* * *

 

Nick waited for Gatsby for hours--perhaps days--in the speakeasy (which was, ever since a notorious mafia shoot-up, well-known on the streets by the code name "Our American Cousin") before writing the evening off as a complete and utter loss.  After Nick had imbibed an unwise number of absinthe shots, Jordan Baker, by virtue of her brawny yet aesthetically appealing arms, hauled him into the passenger seat of her gold-plated personal golf cart and dropped him off on Gatsby’s doorstep.  “Just look what you’ve done,” she hissed at the building, and for just a moment it seemed as if she was addressing the structure itself, calling it out for its gratuitous size and costliness, wholly blaming it and everything it represented for the situation at hand.  That night on the doorstep, orphanlike, Nick dreamt feverishly of the future, of atomic weapons and the pros and cons of instant gratification.         


	6. Gatsby sulks / Meyer Wolfsheim: sleazy pervert / a curious discovery is made in the Buchanan residence

On Halloween, Gatsby doused his body in Chanel #5 and dressed himself as Daisy’s drowned daughter, whom he had been conversing with fairly regularly.  He didn’t throw a party, though there may have been a party on his lawn that occurred without his participation or consent.  He stayed in his bedroom with the curtains drawn, sulking and eating handfuls upon handfuls of saltwater taffy.

 

* * *

 

Meyer Wolfsheim crept out from behind hedges and from within the shadowy mouths of alleyways and sold state secrets with wild abandon.  He would give schoolchildren access to weapons caches around the globe in exchange for bubblegum and little booklets of rare stamps, or trade newlyweds tin cans full of blood diamonds for tawdry Niagara Falls souvenirs.  He would reveal the Achilles heels of Central American revolutionaries for a few kind words and a glimpse of a woman's breasts.  Sometimes at speakeasies, Wolfsheim would take off his tooth cufflinks and press them against his nearly uncooked filet mignon, dancing them up and down the steak's surface and making his cohorts laugh uneasily.  “I fixed the World Series,” he crowed, sloshing his martini extravagantly, “and I don’t know jack shit about baseball.”  As if to punctuate his statement, a cascade of wisdom teeth fell like comets from an unraveled seam in his zoot suit.

 

* * *

 

It was several weeks later that Tom Buchanan, clad in the pastel pink suit he only wore within the confines of his home (due to that degenerate Gatsby’s damnable fondness for the color), stumbled upon the claw-footed tub of perfume that housed the tiny body of his one and only legitimate child.  She was remarkably well-preserved, and when he dredged her out of the murky liquid, he swore she spoke, though he wasn’t sure what it was that she had said.  He carried her wilted form into the basement under the basement, which he was renovating into a secret apartment for his mistress, Myrtle, who could be best described as "foxy" and wasn’t the sort to be put off by the occasional presence of a dead child.  The next day he checked up on her and was astounded—her body was entirely covered in flowers, and when he asked her how she was feeling, she replied in a faraway voice, “I have rejected what I once was in exchange for something greater.  I am all-encompassing.  I am a feature presentation.  I am godlike, sacred and unreachable.”  “I never should have become a father,” admitted Tom.  “Perhaps not,” ceded Pammy, her voice echoing eerily, “but are you not honored by what I have become?  Is it not true that every parent wishes greatness for their progeny?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> fun fact: Chanel #5 first went on the market in 1921, so this reference isn't actually an anachronism, though I originally thought it might be.


	7. the gang gets a little creepy / East and West Egg: Spooksville, USA

Gatsby had taken to sending Daisy cryptic telegrams in the dead of night. He was in a very bad way.  Nick, meanwhile, had begun to somnambulate incessantly.  He would awaken in the middle of Gatsby’s lawn, or floating in his pool, or—as on one rare and concerning occasion—on the roof of his sprawling mansion, clutching at the ornate brass weathervane like one would cling to a memento of better times.  The weathervane seemed to be shaped just a bit like Daisy, albeit abstractly, and it only served to amplify Nick’s distress.

 

* * *

 

Somehow, in the inevitable way it always did, word had gotten around, and the entity known as Pammy had become the oracle of the Jazz Age.  People would come from all over the East and West Eggs for her advice, burning sage and chanting as they approached the Buchanan house.  They were charmed to pieces by this mysticism lark.  Séances, tarot readings, palmistry, and ritual sacrifices became very much in vogue, and the superrich shelled out small fortunes on ornate jewelry crafted from crystals and sculpted in the form of protective runes.  Pammy privately thought that what they were doing was a bit silly, particularly the chanting and some of the titles they addressed her by, but she was a good sport about it.  There were more important things to worry about, after all; from her visions, Pammy foresaw a multitude of abysmal events on the horizon.  She resolved to right a few wrongs before she ascended to her final form, leaving behind the trappings of her human life like one would repress an embarrassing childhood memory.

 


	8. Klipspringer's new instrument / building suspense with Wilson & his uncanny device

Klipspringer didn’t want to play Gatsby’s boring old grand piano anymore, so he built a new instrument made of animal bones and heaps of tarnished silverware filched from upscale restaurants and hotels.  The very first time he played it, its music sent him into a lucid coma, and the musician unwittingly entered the rarified dreams of the East Egg residents.  “But this is the most exclusive club of all,” Tom bellowed, scandalized.  He was playing a round of blackjack with his old money cronies, in addition to the hyperrich moguls of decades past—he wasn’t very imaginative.  “How the devil did you get in?” “Luck,” quipped Klipspringer suavely, taking a seat at the table and cracking his knuckles in anticipation of winning big.

 

* * *

  

Just what on earth was Wilson building in his closed-up garage, the lights on far past midnight?  Industrial clanking and electrical sizzles emitted from the building, and Tom rolled his eyes.  “That dumb fuck probably found a hubcap and mistook it for a UFO.  I bet he’s conducting an alien autopsy on a bit of roadkill as we speak,” he spat scornfully, his teeth clamped airtightly around the feminine curves of a cigar.  Inside the garage, Wilson was nearly finished constructing the device.  Colored lights flashed intermittently across its smooth chromed surface.  “It’s not over ‘til it’s over,” he whispered zealously, and, after murmuring a prayer (or perhaps an incantation) in some unknown tongue, he pressed a button and the world pulled out from under him like a carpet in a slapstick routine.

 

* * *

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this concludes part i of Gatsby!: Of Melancholy and Gin


	9. a deviation in timespace

**part ii**

  

James Gatz woke up with a start in his decrepit one room apartment at the deep end of the Valley of Ashes, where the corrupt trees grew horizontally, leaking a substance resembling the black blood of the wicked and damned.  This was a place where platoons of filth-cocooned children routinely mugged the elderly to nurse their cravings for pornography and hard drugs.  Fearful and fraught with questions, James bolted all the way to what he knew as his house in West Egg.  When he arrived, to his shock, he came upon none other than himself languishing in his swimming pool, dejected and utterly alone at every level on which a person can be alone.  The sugar high of materialism had plainly worn off.  

Wilson crept from behind the hedges, wild and alcohol-fueled, and gunned Gatsby down as ruthlessly as a hitman.  The bullet passed through his chest and punctured his colorful inflatable raft, which withered sadly.  “You killed my wife you dickhead,” gurgled Wilson, insensate.  “You and your new money and your big buttery yellow car killed my goddamn wife.”  He then turned the gun on himself, and the contents of his skull emptied on the immaculate Greek marble poolside, grey and disgusting, like a piñata full of viscous slugs.  Soon afterward, to James’s astonishment, a second, incredibly sober Wilson stepped out from behind the hedgerow and beckoned to the still-living yet incipient man who would be Jay Gatsby.  “I’ve finally figured out what a damned fool I’ve been,” James/Jay declared ardently to the other, nonviolent Wilson.  “I want to go back to my old life and set things right, old sport.  I just hope it’s not too late.”  Wilson nodded sagely.  Beneath his grubby and servile exterior flowed a wellspring of true acumen.  “Just make certain not to forget what you’ve learned here." he warned him.  "You alone have the power to alter the course of the future.” 


	10. Pammy & Wilson team up / Nick is not even faintly like a rose

Pammy and Wilson sat in the subbasement of the Buchanan mansion and ruminated on the events that were slowly encroaching like chlorine gas upon the metaphorical trench-lines that were East and West Egg.  Pammy’s symbiotic floral shroud had taken to sprouting poppies and calla lilies in apprehension of ill tidings.  Pink bells of toxic foxglove blossomed from her fingertips and itched like mad.  The flowers were the means by which Pammy practiced divination; the varieties that cropped up from her skin (some of which were envoys of species not yet discovered, or perhaps unknown to our world) could be interpreted very specifically.  It was possible to ask direct questions and receive fairly direct answers encoded in flowers within minutes, though Pammy chose at her discretion whether or not to analyze the omens.  “My wife is cheating on me with that moron,” Wilson said gloomily, making minute adjustments to a machine he was currently working on with a set of tiny wrenches.  “I know,” commiserated Pammy.  “He’s awfully archetypical, isn’t he?”

 

* * *

 

“I am nothing like a rose,” Nick grumbled.  “I know,” Pammy said gently, quickly covering the red blossom that sprouted from her palm.


	11. Gatsby befriends a crustacean / Klipspringer gets a tad carried away

Gatsby stood at the water’s edge, the anemic moon languidly combing its light through his flaxen hair like a morphine-addicted lover.  He was fraught with indecision.  He scrawled a bevy of names onto the sand with his well-shined oxfords and watched the tide reduce the names to nothing.  He dotted the I in Daisy with a beached horseshoe crab, its javelin-like tail scraping weakly against the pristine whiteness of the beach.  A squadron of uniformed neighborhood maintenance men instantaneously emerged from the darkness and swept the creature into a dustpan, but Gatsby objected and they allowed it to remain where he had placed it.  When at last Gatsby decided to return home, he brought the horseshoe crab with him, carrying it under the arm of his powder-blue smoking jacket with an air of long-forgotten yet slowly regenerating dignity.  

 

* * *

 

Klipspringer had won big at the blackjack table.  Unfortunately, this wealth did not carry over to the waking world, and thus the pianist began to sleep for longer and longer intervals, buying new golf courses for his dream mansion.  In these dreams, Klipspringer’s lifestyle rivaled his employer’s in its casual decadence.  He fathered hundreds of children and held parties where nothing that occured was even vaguely legal.  Often his body continued to play the fantastic jumble of an instrument as he slumbered.  It produced a muffled whistling, like wind passing through a cave, and the ghosts that frequented Gatsby’s chambers crowded around to listen.  Klipspringer had been asleep for nearly a week, and was close to succumbing to dehydration.   _Wake up_ , the ghosts whispered urgently, and he jolted back to life, the money he’d held just moments before vanishing like smoke.   _The music is beautiful but you are not yet a dead man, so there is no need to act like one.  And nor, for that matter, is Mr. Gatsby, despite all evidence to the contrary._

 


	12. Beautiful Shirts! / a failed dalliance with Daisy

Large crystalline tears tumbled over the precipice of Daisy’s elfin cheekbones, and Gatsby looked on, smiling miserably.  “These shirts are such… such good shirts” she said, intoxicated by the opulence and the half-dozen martinis she’d downed rapid-fire like a gun moll in a gangster film.  Gatsby's heap of multicolored silken shirts rose up from the Persian carpet like a dragon's hoard.  “I need to sit down.  Or perhaps undress and lie down in your bed for a bit.”

 

* * *

 

The evening with Daisy had been abysmal.  Gatsby dourly fed his horseshoe crab, which was now housed in an enormous tank in his sitting room.  He’d tried to show it to Daisy and she’d shrieked, fainted, and pouted for what felt like decades while he hovered around her attempting to placate her with rare wines and miniature plates of lavish desserts.  Somehow it had been worse when she'd eventually calmed herself, sucking chocolate mousse from an ornate spoon like an inept succubus.


	13. Tom is slightly perceptive / Tom & Myrtle have a wild houseparty

“Nicholas, my boy!  I want to acquaint you with my bitch on the side, Myrtle!” bellowed Tom, clapping Nick on the shoulder forcefully, as if a genuine threat of violence lurked beneath his outward jocularity.  Nick, though thoroughly disgusted, supposed that Tom (in his own flawed way) was trying to cheer him up; he’d been very despondent as of late, and even the Buchanans, usually renowned for their extraordinary indifference, seemed to have taken notice.  Nick supposed the final straw had been the time he had sleepwalked into their home in the wee hours of the morning, his face tear-streaked, raving deliriously about the merits of socialism and the abolition of material culture.    _Why do people keep calling me Nicholas?_ Nick pondered dejectedly, and he followed Tom down the dusty, unforgiving, and likely haunted road that led to the Valley of Ashes.

 

* * *

 

Nick felt like he was being dragged inexorably forward, plummeting headfirst into some nameless & as-yet unconsummated disaster.  He sat inertly in Tom’s underground chamber of vice as the trappings of revelry piled high on his person.  Streamers and confetti wreathed Nick’s body like bandoliers, and rum soaked his clothing until he felt like a giant tiramisu.  Myrtle tripped over a champagne bottle and broke her dog’s leg, but Tom managed to manufacture a crude splint out of a cigarette holder.  “Hey asshole, get my puppy some biscuits,” crowed Myrtle at Tom, and Tom smiled indulgently.  “Don’t worry, Nicholas—that’s just how people talk to one another on the streets,” he explained enthusiastically to the catatonic Carraway.  “It’s all quite novel.”  Tom then unexpectedly sucker punched Myrtle in the nose, hamming up his role as the stereotypical working-class wife beater, nevermind that she was someone else's wife.  After the initial shock wore off they both began to laugh, finger-painting obscenities on the walls in Myrtle’s nose-blood.  Meanwhile, Pammy looked on from the rafters, bespangled with peonies, shaking her head in shame and empathy for Nick.  

 

 

 

 


	14. Klipspringer becomes a magician / back at Tom's party / the truth about the green light / Tom confronts his feelings

Klipspringer wisely abandoned his music career after his brush with death.  He decided to become a magician and took up the stage name Ewing the Dumbfounder.  One night at Gatsby’s party, he was sawing Daisy in half, a trick he admittedly knew next-to-nothing about.  After he had theatrically rubbed a blunt-edged saw all over the prop casket, eliciting jeers from the audience of hammered moguls, a tiny child-sized version of Daisy unexpectedly leapt from the hinged door at the lower end of the box.  “A playmate for Pammy!” the real Daisy slurred as the audience looked on with wonder.  Outside the ring of light that was Gatsby’s party, it seemed as if the universe ceased, and a black void swallowed all who strayed beyond the comfortable confines of their merrymaking.  The tiny Daisy skipped off and vanished into the chasm, leaving behind a pink velvet ribbon and endless questions.

 

* * *

 

 

Meanwhile at Tom's party, Mr. McKee was putting the moves on a plastered Nick Carraway.  His beard of a wife had departed, and he was looking to score.  Nick, apoplectic, followed him home and attempted to drown his sorrows in male companionship, to no avail.  "This is more like getting _un_ lucky," McKee grumbled crossly as Nick wept on his photographs of the ocean, which seemed to him a terribly upsetting metaphor for solitude and the ultimate erosion of all things.

 

* * *

 

 

That night, after polishing off a bottle of tequila, Gatsby finally admitted to himself that he hadn’t done much to change his life after glimpsing the future with Wilson.  He was still pining over Daisy, albeit in a confused and possibly compulsory manner.  He was throwing parties, getting liquored up, and brooding.  His was a static existence, a dull rotation of euphoria and disappointment, and it was only getting worse.  It was like the opposite of cognac--it aged poorly.  Daisy was becoming more intolerable by the day, but he stuck with her doggedly in the hopes that it would work out somehow.  Mad with anguish, Gatsby donned an elegant paisley frock coat and dragged his small canoe down to the beach.  He paddled out toward the pier and its haunting green light, only to find the object of his fixation symbolically festooned with the desiccated husks of dead insects.                        

* * *

 

“This is more than your typical rich-man-shacking-up-with-a-hot-working-class-babe scenario,” Tom said, disbelief coating his every word like the taste of some strange inverted pill that’s sweet on the inside and bitter on the outside.  “I think that I’m... in love with you.”  “For real?” squealed Myrtle, cutely wiping a smudge of cocaine from the end of her nose.           


	15. Pammy and Little Daisy meet

“I suppose you’re sort of my sister,” Pammy said coldly, eyeing the small Daisy with distrust.  “You could say that,” replied the strange girl cryptically, following up her statement with a lengthy anticipatory pause.  “What?  What is it?” demanded Pammy with irritation, her pores breaking out in a flurry of thistles and brambles.  She didn’t like this overblown sense of mystery.  She’d outgrown that phase of her narrative arc ages ago.  “I’m here to tell you that you mustn’t interfere with the canon,” the Little Daisy said urgently. “The story is heading in the wrong direction.  There will be dire consequences if this continues.”  “I’ll do whatever the _fuck_ I want,” Pammy spat, all semblance of cordiality evaporating.  “Someone’s got to straighten out all this bullshit.”  The small Daisy looked scandalized.  “You have no regard for intellectual property,” she chirped accusatorially, eyes brimming with tears, and stormed out of the room.  Pammy shrugged and resumed her scrying. _It should be in the Public Domain by now, anyways,_ she thought bitterly.


	16. Jordan's B&E adventure / a Serious Talk with Gatsby

Jordan Baker needed to have a serious talk with Gatsby.  She realized that her flirtation with Nick wasn’t going anywhere--she wasn't an idiot--but she kind of liked the kid.  He was alright.  On weekends they golfed together, and Nick didn’t say a word when she casually nudged the ball into the hole with the toe of her fancy brogues.  Jordan put on a smart red tartan suit and strolled determinedly to Gatsby’s mansion.  After several assertive raps at the front door failed to rouse the new-moneyer from his stupor, Jordan, undeterred, clambered in through an open window.  Wispy ghosts scattered as her feet touched the mahogany floors.  “Jesus Christ, this place is like a mausoleum,” she exclaimed.

 

* * *

 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about and neither do you,” Gatsby mumbled evasively.  He was lying in bed, feverish, with his blankets piled high and three half-empty glasses of ice water on the nightstand.  “Yes, you do, don’t be a dick,” Jordan insisted.  “Nick’s been mooning over you for ages, and here you are, festering away in this stupidly huge house—look at you!  You’ve probably caught the clap from Daisy.”  “Daisy doesn’t have the clap,” Gatsby protested, “and I haven’t done anything to catch it, anyways,” he added moodily.  Daisy sat unnoticed in the corner shoveling lemon squares into her mouth, her eyes wide and blackened like a shark’s.  


	17. George Wilson: private eye / Gatsby asks the oracle / Wilson tails Daisy

George Wilson was deeply disturbed by the Wilson variant he’d glimpsed in the future—a drunken, disorderly man, the last vestiges of his intellect thoroughly masked by rage and unbridled substance abuse.  If he hadn’t made the decision to build the device, to drag himself out of the pit of ignorance and become enlightened, that would have surely been the result.  It was hard to stomach.  Since warning Gatsby of impending disaster, Wilson had consulted with Pammy on a number of potentially serious matters regarding the East and West Egg denizens.  Above all, they were troubled by Daisy and her role in upcoming events.  Pammy and Wilson were keeping close tabs on several key players in the unfolding West/East Egg drama, particularly Nick, Gatsby, Tom, and Daisy.  The debutante’s behavior had become increasingly erratic as events deviated from their intended story arc; she had begun skulking around the neighborhood, rattling strings of pearls in both fists like a shaman and hissing homespun curses.  Several citizens reported sightings of her within their homes, though it was unclear how she had gained entry.  Wilson converted his garage into a private investigator’s office and took the collective interests of this portion of Long Island as his first pro bono client.  He had found his purpose in life.

 

* * *

 

“I guess I need to find something out,” said Gatsby hesitantly, crossing the threshold to Pammy’s section of the Buchanan house.  “I’ll say,” drawled Pammy archly, hopping down from a hammock made of kudzu vines.  “Oh, I’m sorry, were you sleeping, old sport?” asked Gatsby with concern.  “I don’t do that,” explained Pammy gently, attempting to assuage Gatsby’s near-palpable nervousness.  “Or at least, I don’t _require_ sleep.”  

 

* * *

 

Wilson sort of understood Tom’s marital frustration, though it went without being said that he still failed to understand Tom.  After a few days of tailing Daisy, Wilson thought he was going to lose his mind.  Not only did she fail to contribute relevantly to any conversation she was included in, she was creepy, too, and a lot of the things she did were flat-out uncanny.  While following her on a stroll around the immaculately maintained neighborhood, Daisy suddenly deviated from the path and vomited up a large quantity of a thin, fizzy substance.  Wilson did a chemical analysis of the fluid and found that it was pure champagne, with no indication that it was ever exposed to a human mouth let alone the inside of a stomach.  Another evening, Wilson witnessed her fingers bending in the opposite direction of their joints, and on yet another instance he came upon her crouched in Nick’s flowerbed, mechanically chewing the heads off of daffodils.  

 

 


	18. misunderstanding! / Klipspringer is not a magician

“So, what is it that you want to know?” Pammy asked, offhandedly braiding and unbraiding a clutch of ivy that had sprouted from her hands.  “Well… I suppose I want to know who it is, exactly, that I’m in love with,” Gatsby replied uncomfortably, staring down at his wingtips.  “A relatively simple question in the grand scheme of things,” Pammy assured the ex-bootlegger, whose face had become extraordinarily red.  “Just take my hand.”  The vines receded into her skin, and she extended a still-greenish palm, which Gatsby resolutely clasped.  Daisies immediately cropped up across her arms, and her loose white dress swelled with the sudden presence of the flowers.  A few of the yellow and white blossoms even took root in her scalp, and Pammy wasted no time in pulling these out, irritated.  Gatsby attempted to look pleased with the result, and Nick, peering from behind a black velvet armchair, began to weep uncontrollably, and he bolted from the room, no longer feigning absence.  Little Daisy, seated on a rafter, smiled and vanished, her work there being done.  A single red rose bloomed on Pammy’s wrist, full-petalled and tragic, but it went unnoticed by Gatsby, who, after thanking the girl with mingled graciousness and resignation, had left the Buchanan house abruptly.       

 

* * *

  
  
No matter how hard Klipspringer tried, he couldn’t recreate the magic trick that summoned the Little Daisy into existence.  He began to delve deeper and deeper into the arcane, memorizing the contents of ancient spellbooks and studying up on the religious practices of long-dead civilizations, but no matter how hard he tried, no matter how much knowledge he acquired, he failed to make a tiny double of anyone, even himself, materialize.  Frustrated, the pianist began to contemplate returning to his malevolent instrument, even if it had tried to kill him.  He had been, after all, a virtuoso of sorts.            

    

 


	19. the ongoing & sinister machinations of Little Daisy / Nick cries a river / an attempt at resolution goes terribly awry

Pammy was getting terribly tired of Little Daisy’s antics.  It was bad enough that she’d spoiled the revelation of Gatsby’s true love with her malignant counter-sorcery.  Pammy had tried her damnedest to set things straight with that, but neither the millionaire nor the bondsman would speak with her, or with anyone, for that matter.  Instead, they receded into their separate heartbreaks, fetishizing their loneliness as unreservedly as teenagers.  Little Daisy, meanwhile, continued to menace the community, clearing the cobwebs from the green light and renewing Gatsby’s midnight telegrams to Daisy without Gatsby’s actual participation.  Once she even posed as Daisy and attempted to seduce Tom, though she was—to Tom’s credit—unsuccessful.

 

* * *

 

Jordan Baker brought Nick yet another box of tissues.  He went through them systematically, taking intermittent breaks from prolonged bouts of crying to mumble with quivering lip exhaustive diatribes illustrating the whys and wherefores of his sadness.  These speeches were always annoyingly indirect, never identifying the persons involved by name.  “Listen,” Jordan finally interjected, “I’ve already explained to you that Gatsby isn’t into Daisy anymore, but if you really want to believe some voodoo bullshit, go right on ahead.”  Nick paused momentarily, startled by her outburst, before once again dissolving into tears.  Jordan sighed and got up to look for another box of tissues.  Nick kept a pretty sizeable stockpile at the ready.                            

 

* * *

 

“What kind of a row are you trying to start in my house anyhow?” Daisy shrieked at Myrtle, who clutched at her tiny dog in amazement.  Tom, one beefy arm slung around his mistress like a lunette around a deposed royal's neck, likewise chortled in disbelief before realizing that Daisy was dead serious, and he figuratively-but-not-literally sobered up.  Myrtle, Nick, Daisy, Tom, Jordan, and Gatsby were in a private VIP room at the speakeasy known as Our American Cousin _,_ where they had decided to meet and discuss their rapidly diverging lifestyles like adults.  It was very hot out.  A segment of Daisy’s face slid down her cheek, but she quickly molded it back to its original position.  Without the slightest hint of a warning, Daisy rounded on Gatsby, throwing indiscriminate punches before she had even gotten within five feet of the millionaire, whose reaction speed had grown laughably slow due to his penchant for languishing.  Nick leapt between them, catching a blow to the left cheekbone from the golddigger’s pinwheeling arms.  Infection was immediately evident in the form of a festering sore, a grotesque blemish that already dominated the majority of the reliable narrator’s face.  Gatsby caught Nick as he fell, stunned, disrupting the punch bowl with its massive centrifuge of ice.  Grapefruit and blood orange surged across the floor, leaving a violent stain upon Nick, Gatsby, and the rococo yet tasteful carpet.  The ball of ice rolled across the floor and came to rest at Daisy’s triumphant heel.      


	20. the other Wilson strikes / and nothing can stop him

“Desperate times, desperate measures” Little Daisy explained apologetically, shrugging, and the alternate-universe Wilson barreled toward them as they attempted to leave the club, utterly plastered and bellowing inarticulately about his wife.  During this confusion, Gatsby realized with a start that someone had taken his keys, and his car was missing.  The theft itself didn’t bother him nearly as much as he thought it would, but he needed to get Nick to a doctor.      

 

* * *

 

The Wilson that steamrolled toward them wasn’t at all clean-shaven.  He didn’t even have the carefully-groomed crop of five o’clock shadow that indicates a rugged yet reassuringly domesticated nature.  He had the beard of a man who had wholeheartedly abandoned reason.  He was savage, rabid, thick froth from some impossibly oversized stein of cheap beer garnishing his hairy, hoary muzzle, and he was galloping at full speed straight toward Tom and Myrtle.  “Listen, I’ll sell you some cars,” bargained Tom, genuinely unnerved and doing absolutely nothing to discourage the incredible force of will that was impelling Wilson forward.  Suddenly, the disgruntled mechanic leapt, becoming airborne, his hands outstretched like the thorny paws of a tiger.             


	21. consulting T.J. Eckleburg / Wilson v. Wilson / Jordan is a great friend

“There’s absolutely no medical reason why he should still be unconscious,” Dr. Eckleburg said in a rusty voice, pacing and chewing at the earpiece of his enormous gold-rimmed spectacles studiously.  “Though I’m not sure what all _this_ is about,” he added, gesturing absently to the wound inflicted by Daisy’s attack, which now seemed to be healing and causing Nick’s features to meld together to form a fleshy membrane.  Gatsby had abandoned the others, choosing instead to carry Nick all the way to the office of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg, the foremost physician of the Valley of Ashes.  Originally assumed to be an ophthalmologist, Eckleburg assured Gatsby that he “did a bit of everything.”  “A bit of everything” apparently included the occult, since the doctor’s ultimate determination was that the injury and subsequent coma were the result of “some kind of curse.”  “My advice?  Find yourself a magician,” the old man said sagely.  

 

* * *

 

Just as Wilson was about to deal a crippling blow to the poleaxed Myrtle, he froze, suspended in midair like a mosquito in amber.  The more sensible Wilson had been warned by Pammy that some very atypical energies were amassing in and around the speakeasy known as Our American  Naturally, he had brought his device with him on his investigation, and quickly manipulated timespace to prevent the impending brutal murder of his wife.  After he turned a few dials, the paused Wilson disappeared, leaving a cloud of boozy dust in his wake that rapidly dissipated.  “Where in blazes did he go?” barked Tom, astounded.  “I’m not sure, but I hope it’s somewhere kinder,” said Wilson sadly, shaking his head.    

 

* * *

 

Not knowing quite what to do, but acquainted with at least two people who could be considered magicians, Gatsby called Jordan and the pair transported the unresponsive Nick back to Gatsby’s house via Jordan’s golf cart.  Gatsby thanked Jordan profusely for being such a good sport about all of this, to which she responded gruffly, masking her emotions as skillfully as a high school quarterback, “Well, what else am I going to do?  It’s not like I have to have a--a  _job_ or something _.”_


	22. Tom & Myrtle take a big relationship step / Pammy fixes Nick's gross face / Pammy can't fix Nick's coma

After their harrowing brush with death, Tom and Myrtle immediately put the wheels in motion for the construction of a house halfway between the Valley of Ashes and the Eggs in a region known as No Man’s Land.  They filled out their respective sets of divorce paperwork and thought hopefully of the future, of domestic altercations and extravagant parties not segregated by class.  Perhaps someday the parties wouldn’t even be segregated by race—Tom was making a good deal of progress.

 

* * *

 

“I can definitely do something to clear up this rash, but I’m not so sure about the sleeping,” Pammy frowned, administering an herbal poultice to Nick’s grotesquely disfigured face.  “Oh, and don’t worry—you’re not in love with Daisy.  I’ve been trying to tell you for weeks, though you really should have been able to figure that one out yourself.”  “I think I have,” said Gatsby forlornly, staring down at Nick’s poor salve-eclipsed countenance.    

 

* * *

 

After a long and unsuccessful day of attempting miracles, Klipspringer wearily returned to Gatsby’s house.  He was sort of a mascot there, so there was no need for him to pay for room and board.  He just kind of came and went at his leisure.  This made him feel a little like a loser sometimes, but he rationalized that feeling like a loser was a necessary step in the life of an aspiring musician.  When he entered the Gatsby compound, he came upon a strange scene.  Gatsby was weeping and applying bandages to Nick’s face, which was almost entirely clear of the strange blemish.  Jordan was tensely sipping a mimosa by the fireplace, and Pammy was tossing bits of vegetation into a cauldron as quickly as she could produce them.  Every few minutes, she would dip a test tube into the vessel and draw out a murky fluid, which she would inspect closely, inevitably emptying the contents in disgust before beginning her task anew.  None of them even so much as glanced at Klipspringer, who scrambled off to his attic bedroom.


	23. Klipspringer humbly offers his services / prepping for the dreamwalk / the dreamwalk

“I’d like to help,” Klipspringer said tentatively, wheeling his massive and intricately crenelated instrument into view at the top of the spiral staircase.  “What is that?” Gatsby inquired disinterestedly, all of his energy being directed toward fixating mournfully on Nick’s predicament, but Pammy’s eyes widened, and she murmured thoughtfully, “That could work.”                            

 

* * *

  

“You’re doing a very brave thing,” said Jordan Baker, thoroughly impressed, upturning a colossal wheelbarrow filled with large plush cushions behind the musician’s piano bench in case his otherworldly slumber caused him to fall backward.  “Nonsense,” Klipspringer said cavalierly, taking a seat at the helm of the device, “I’ve been looking for an excuse to use this thing for ages.”  

 

* * *

 

When Klipspringer opened his eyes, he was standing in the middle of West Egg, which was deeply ensconced in fog.  In fact, the musician wasn’t even sure if he was walking on solid ground.  Every time he tried to inspect it, the fog grew thicker, obscuring his feet, until he eventually decided not to bother.  Gatsby’s war ghosts trailed behind him, offering words of encouragement and advice.  They were glad someone was taking an interest in Nick’s (and by proxy, Gatsby’s) wellbeing.  After a long, low-visibility journey, Klipspringer arrived at Gatsby’s house, where an enormous party was in full swing.  Faceless doppelgangers of Tom, Daisy, and the rest of the main characters milled through the haze, making muffled warbling sounds and shrill, alien peals of laughter.  After several unsuccessful attempts to inquire as to the whereabouts of the host, Klipspringer settled for wandering the intricate and mist-shrouded hallways.                    


	24. Tom & Myrtle's evening drink is interrupted / Klipspringer in the labyrinth

Tom reclined on the porch swing on his new veranda, his head in Myrtle’s lap, sipping a mint julep and generally feeling self-satisfied, like an antebellum tycoon on permanent holiday.  Myrtle likewise slugged down a few shots of fruit-flavored vodka held out on a tray by a well-groomed butler, smiling indolently out at the vast stretch of nothingness that surrounded their new love shack.  The couple’s quiet, contemplative drinking session was cut short, however, when a great roaring disturbed the tranquility of the evening.  “By god, Gatsby’s car!  But who’s that driving it?” Tom exclaimed, sitting up so abruptly that his drink jettisoned onto the floor.  The glass, had it been ordinary, would have shattered, but luckily it was made from a new and exciting material called plastic, and only bounced a few times in the puddle before falling still.  Due to its incredible speed, the car didn’t remain visible for long as it revved off into the horizon, but the caterwauling of its horn remained audible for several minutes.  “The future is marvelous,” Tom digressed, staring at the spilled julep appreciatively.    

  

* * *

 

Klipspringer ultimately became so lost that he frayed the sleeve of his magnificent conductor’s tailcoat with his teeth and began to unravel it, looping and knotting the thread around the various sconces and coat hooks and elaborate gold gilt picture frames that encrusted the walls.  This seemed to be a workable strategy for a few hours, until the musician noticed that the string on the wall was doubled-up, despite the surroundings being completely foreign to anything he had seen thus far.  Just as he was about to give up and ask the ghosts to shepherd him back to waking life, a faceless Gatsby slowly drifted from the doorway of one of the hundreds of rooms, moving slowly and evenly, somewhat like a slug. The mist obscured the figure’s legs so much that Klipspringer doubted that he had legs at all, and could therefore in fact be a slug-man of some sort.  The dream-world’s version of Gatsby wordlessly gestured toward an open door at the end of the hallway, from which a bright light shone.  Klipspringer fortified himself with a little help from his pocket flask and soldiered forward.        

 

 


	25. Tom is brave / Klipspringer finds Nick / Slug Gatsby attacks!

“Why do you have to be so goddamn dumb?” squealed Myrtle hysterically to Tom.  “You don’t even know what that thing is.”  She was referring, of course, to the mysterious being that had carjacked Gatsby’s huge golden station wagon and was currently joyriding across Long Island like a devil-may-care gambler of souls.  Tom sighed, donning his calfskin driving gloves, which made him look objectively cool.  “I’m a man, Myrtle.  I react quickly and aggressively to situations because it’s the only way I can distract myself from my inevitable and likely violent, meaningless death, in addition to my physical inability to maintain an erection for more than a few paltry hours.  I just read a book about it.  Very informative.  It’s in my study if you’re interested—you should be able to make it through a couple of sentences before I get back.”  “Are you insulting my intelligence?” asked Myrtle somewhat playfully.  “Of course not,” assured Tom, “I’m just really fast.”   

 

* * *

 

“Get up!” shouted Klipspringer, jostling Nick roughly with the tips of his boldly-hued lime green brogues.  The narrator was lying on the floor in the luminous room in a tragic pose.  He had a face.  Klipspringer was glad of this detail, because he was getting really unnerved by that facelessness business.  “I can’t, I have nothing to live for,” Nick lamented, covering his thankfully-present face with his hands.  “Gatsby is upset,” Klipspringer said flatly, “and Jordan has had way too many mimosas.  And Pammy is tearing vines and flowers out of her skin and I think maybe it’s hurting her a little bit.”  Nick peered out from between his fingers.  “Okay,” he sniffled desolately, and got to his feet, easing his muscles from their state of cataleptic rigor.          

 

* * *

  

Like a minotaur protecting its infinite and terrible home, the faceless Gatsby began to give chase, his slime trail propelling him to greater and greater speeds.  Tangled in the unraveled hodgepodge of his own clothing, Klipspringer faltered, the horrible creature smelling his terror through its gills and whistling with ghoulish excitement.  Nick, remembering his days in the trenches of France, ran straight toward the beast, grabbing the pianist around the waist and dragging him into a small side-room off the misty and unforgivingly cold hallway, pulling the crooked door closed with an echoing thud.  


	26. Nick & Klipspringer catch their bearings / Tom hunts the car / Little Daisy attempts to preserve the great american novel

Klipspringer and Nick found themselves closed up in a claustrophobically tiny nursery, a bassinet in the center of the room, the walls apparently made of loose cotton or perhaps extremely condensed fog.  “What was that thing?” Klipspringer gasped, the exercise-induced asthma that prevented him from being cool in college dreadfully evident in his voice.  “I don’t know,” Nick said, “but I think we lost it.  Where are we, anyhow?  I was under the impression that I’d been crying in my bedroom for the past couple of days.”  “We’re on our way home,” the musician declared resolutely, though he kept his back to the door.  “Don’t be so sure,” said a tinny voice, and a pale hand clasped the edge of the bassinet.            

 

 

* * *

 

  

In his search for the elusive carjacker, Tom instinctively headed toward West Egg.  An eldritch horror careening at impossible speeds in an ex-bootlegger’s ( _probably current bootlegger_ , Tom thought sourly) stolen car would only provide a footnote on that lot’s already exhaustive roster of disreputable characters and their insatiable lust for chicanery.  In the distance, Tom thought he caught a glimpse of the vehicle in question, and he scoffed reflexively at the sight of it.  The car was taller than a teenaged giraffe, its three-tiered golden smokestacks resplendent in the sunlight which blared like jazz trumpets across the softly rolling hills of Long Island, New York.  Around certain particularly sharp corners, centripetal motion encouraged it to break the sound barrier, and the windows of roadside houses splintered.  Tom, awash in a flood of nostalgia for his old hunting days in Zanzibar, gave chase.    

 

 

* * *

 

 

Little Daisy heaved herself inelegantly from the bassinet, which looked very much like the bone-white casket of a cherub in its terrible, pearly splendor.  “Don’t try to ruin what we’re doing here, Ewing,” she said menacingly, stepping toward Klipspringer.  “It’s already halfway done.”  “And just what is, if you don’t mind my asking?” inquired Nick with uncharacteristic boldness, though he remained flattened against the door alongside Klipspringer.  “I’m shutting this whole thing down and starting from scratch, obviously.  Welcome,” she said with a universe-encompassing gesture, “to the new story.”  “What do you mean, ‘the new story’?” Klipspringer said testily.  “I mean the real story.  You’re _subtext,_  You’re less than subtext.  You’re finished,” Little Daisy declared with proud certainty.  “What’s wrong with our story?” asked Nick, genuinely confused.  “Are you two dickheads serious?” Little Daisy spat, becoming increasingly profane.  “There are no _ghosts_ in _The Great Gatsby_.  There’s no time travel, no successful relationships, nothing.  Gatsby loves Daisy, and Gatsby fucking _dies_.”  On her last word, the door which Nick and Klipspringer were barring began to bow inward, and a slimy something oozed beneath it, green, viscous, and oddly luminous.        


	27. Jordan kills some time / Slug-Gatsby claims his bride / a curious sound

Jordan Baker was becoming quite concerned with the erratic sleep of the musician.  His limbs flailed in various swimming strokes and his eyes opened and closed in Morse code messages that spelled out a series of nonsense phrases in Latin.  However, Klipspringer had given her strict instructions to only wake him in the event that his death appeared imminent, so she mixed herself another mimosa and resumed her vigil, feeling impotent.  After several long sips of the mimosa failed to bolster her spirits in any meaningful, non-transitory way, Jordan got up and retrieved a golf club from her cart outside.  The club was capped with an animal head-shaped cozy, which Jordan removed and placed over her hand.  She stared into its button eyes listlessly, stroking its fur.  Pammy dropped down from her hammock of vines near the ceiling and extended a strand of ivy, filling the animal head—which was a lion—with artificial life, tottering it around on stringy green plant-legs.  It looked like it was stricken with the polio.  Jordan felt a little better.   

 

* * *

 

"So the Gatsby in this universe wants you?” inquired Klipspringer.  “Is that what I’m supposed to be taking away from all this?” he continued, gesturing contemptuously at the mansion with its ridiculous cloudlike walls.  “Well, it’s a bit more complicated than that,” Little Daisy said imperiously, “but in essence, yes.”  Nick and Klipspringer exchanged a significant glance, and at an unspoken count of three they released their hold on the door.  In barreled the slug-footed Gatsby, ensnaring Little Daisy in its terrible quilt of bioluminescent mucus.  “Oh goddammit,” she said helplessly, trying fruitlessly to escape from Gatsby and the familiar green light that emanated seductively from his person.  After a brief struggle, the creature set her down gently, staring at her with its newly-formed eyes, which glistened like fresh eggs in the mostly blank expanse of its face.  “Goddammit,” she said again, but tenderly, her rage at last relenting, and she embraced the creature, confessing “you _know_ I never loved Tom Buchanan, you big idiot.”  Klipspringer and Nick looked on, discomfited but nonetheless thoroughly relieved, as Little Daisy and slug-Gatsby exited the room hand in hand, presumably joining the party.  “Well, that was damned strange,” remarked Nick, raising an eyebrow, “but at least she’s not actually a child.”  Klipspringer nodded vigorously in agreement.

 

* * *

 

"Now what?” asked Nick.  “I don’t know,’ sighed Klipspringer wearily, trying in vain to sort out the threads of his ruined jacket.  “So what did Gatsby say about me?” inquired Nick with urgency.  “Like, did he seem as if he missed me in the manner that one would miss their investment money during a bear market, or did he…”  “Shh!” hissed Klipspringer fiercely, like a jungle cat or an overheated teapot, “do you hear something?”  Sure enough, a ghostly whistling could be heard faintly in the distance, like a pipe organ bedecked with haunted clarinets.              


	28. Klipspringer 'n Nick attempt escape / Tom's chase intensifies

Klipspringer and Nick followed the music to the end of the hallway, where a faint light was emitting from the leftmost wall.  Embedded in this wall was the entrance to a stairwell, which spiraled up endlessly, swathed in mist and brightness.  They scaled the stairs like George Mallory scaling Everest.  This was not a garden-variety metaphor but a literal fact, as the stairs became progressively steeper and the air grew thinner and thinner until Nick and Klipspringer, clinging to narrow hand- and footholds, each privately began to worry that it would be physically impossible to reach the summit.  They would be trapped in a world that probably already had its own Klipspringer and Nick, and although their doppelgangers might differ in their faces or lack thereof, they would nonetheless feel like usurpers.  Or perhaps, like George Mallory, they would be killed in their ascension, and their ice-mummified bodies would shine like slabs of white marble on the stairs until the end-of-days.  Or maybe they’d just have to eat each other.         

 

* * *

 

Meanwhile, Tom’s car chase was intensifying.  The speed his coupe had reached caused it to lift off of the ground, its wheels treading the sky in an amazing display of both confidence and class.  Donning an aviator’s cap and goggles, Tom commenced to do an aerial sweep of the island, quickly spotting Gatsby’s ludicrous gold vehicle.  Tom was suddenly awash with horror at the previously-unexplored possibility that the paint could in fact be made of actual gold, but he managed to shake off this daunting notion, and he tilted the dazzling chromium grille of his car earthward.  If the car were indeed gold-plated, he'd have to have his manservant chip it off in the dead of night and bring it to him to re-forge into something worthwhile, like a cherub-shaped water spout for his koi pond or a set of champagne flutes. 

 

* * *

 

“Wow, check it out,” said Pammy, pointing out the window.  “Do you suppose it’s a comet?” asked Jordan, squinting up at the plummeting object that had just punched an inverse halo through the clouds.  “Divine intervention,” Pammy offered sagely.  Tom Buchanan gripped the steering wheel with his driving gloves, the tassels on his white cashmere scarf fluttering behind him like the banner of the last free nation on earth.


	29. escape! / awake! / kaboom!

“Let’s all go out for a drink when all this is over,” wheezed Nick, forcing his blue-tinged limbs up another steep, narrow stair. “I’ve got a better idea,” mumbled Klipspringer, braving his safety to polish his glasses. “Let’s go out for several drinks.” “Good man,” exclaimed Nick, clapping Klipspringer feebly on the back with a palm and wincing at the impact. Klipspringer likewise cringed resignedly and attempted to climb higher, but stopped when his head struck the ceiling. 

 

* * *

 

“God fucking dammit,” said Klipspringer, his voice completely leeched of its capacity to convey emotion. “Seriously?” said Nick, and repeated the word several times. “Seriously?” But Klipspringer would not accept defeat, and he scrabbled at the ceiling with determination, chipping off layer after layer of ice until a small latch was revealed, along with the outlines of a trapdoor. If they were lucky, it’d be a way out, and he’d still have two working hands with which to play piano. If they weren’t lucky, well, they’d have to get used to people who looked like their friends minus the faces. This didn’t sound like an appealing prospect, so the pianist and the narrator shoved at the door with all their remaining strength. Light flooded through the newly-opened hatch, and they shielded their faces, wincing like cave creatures.

 

* * *

 

 

Slowly, arduously, Nick Carraway opened his eyes and peered around the room. “Gatsby… is that… a horseshoe crab?” he whispered, and the playboy nodded tearfully, embracing Nick. “That’s so cool.” They kissed. It was beautiful. Klipspringer, meanwhile, awoke from his journey and promptly high-fived Jordan.  “If I was at all interested in men, I’d totally make out with you,” declared the golfer, giddy with success and alcohol. “Change ‘men’ to ‘women,’ and that’s just how I feel!” replied the pianist, and they resolved to be best friends and hit up illicit clubs together. Pammy, meanwhile, smiled benevolently, pleased that all of it had worked out.  The five of them arose and stepped out into the sun, where they marveled at the opulent, whitewashed beauty of East Egg. The only thing that was mildly unsettling about the scenery was the rather outsized golden car that was rocketing toward them, hellbent on committing a simultaneous spree-killing and vehicular homicide.

 

* * *

 

 

“I’m filing for divorce,” Tom shouted, slamming his coupe into the side of Gatsby’s colossal yellow car just in the nick of time. Great plumes of jet-black smoke billowed from the vehicle, and the klaxon horn gave one last tragically jaunty utterance before withering into the stuff of memories. What spilled out of the driver’s side was beyond words. “Never mind, looks like I’m a widower,” he quipped, staring down at the puddle of undulating slime that was his former life partner. “Now, I suppose you rabble want to come over my place and drink all my booze,” Tom grumbled. It was the closest thing to an invitation that he could muster.

                                

 


	30. dinner scene redux / but what IS the green light? / the portal opens / finale

“I suppose you can have the house,” said Tom to Wilson. “Since, you know, I took your wife.  She's my wife now.” The whole cast was having dinner on the patio of the Buchanan residence, and ethereal gauzy curtains were billowing around them atmospherically, an ode to old money, new money, and above all, an affirmation that the wealthy are exempt from the petty rules that govern the common. Myrtle and Jordan were telling dirty jokes, and Wilson and Klipspringer were collaborating on a new invention. Pammy was arranging a bouquet of symbolically positive flowers, humming contentedly and listening to Gatsby and Nick’s war stories, the ghosts occasionally chiming in from the periphery, and Tom was sipping his most aged and decadent bourbon in celebration. Even Gatsby’s horseshoe crab was in attendance, scuttling around the table offering people hors d’oeuvres from a platter on its back like a tiny, exoskeletoned butler.  “Just a moment,” Tom said, breaking the calm and reluctantly putting down his drink to point toward the pier, “what in the god's name is going on out there?"

 

* * *

 

 

The green light was pulsing insistently, growing outward until it filled the entire pier with impenetrable brightness.  A curious whirring sound accompanied it, rising in pitch and cracking a set of very expensive, very delicate teacups and temporarily deafening every purebred dog in East Egg.  As it finally began to fade, a shape appeared in the greenish haze that remained.  It was a massive door at the end of the pier, and the door was opening.

 

* * *

 

 

Slug Gatsby inched out of the door, revealing at last that his lower half was indeed that of a slug.  He appeared to be a rather distinguished slug, however; he was wearing a tuxedo, and he was hand in hand with a veiled, wedding dress-clad Little Daisy.  “Hello,” said Little Daisy a tad sheepishly, “We’re on our honeymoon.  Do you mind our stopping by?”  An undulating puddle spilled from the door behind them and slowly formed into normally-sized Daisy, who smiled emptily, the borders of her body shimmering.  And last, the drunkard Wilson emerged, haggard and painfully sober, apologetically staring at his shoes.  “I know we’ve been a bother, but our world diverged and was never fully actualized due to you lot’s incessant tampering with the narrative, so perhaps you can understand our frustration.  And Jay was turned into some kind of hybrid for some reason, which thankfully doesn’t bother me in the slightest.”  “Let’s have a party,” said Gatsby, breaking the silence that ensued following Little Daisy’s bizarre explanation, and everyone unanimously approved.

 

* * *

  
  
Mr. McKee was chatting up Klipspringer with a surprising amount of success under the dreamy canopy of trees in Gatsby’s garden and all was right with the world.  Though the party was admittedly a bit awkward at first, the whole rabble of usual suspects filed in like joyous automatons, and that was it: the stock market would probably never crash, the word "austerity" would fade from every dictionary, and the portal between worlds would continue to spice things up by unleashing new variants of familiar faces.  And Gatsby and Nick would be together, sharing beautiful shirts and jetting in the hydroplane toward the sun like two successful Icaruses.  For now, they presided over the revelers, benevolently mixing brand new cocktails, muddling ingredients never before muddled and forever leaving their impression on the field of mixology, before ultimately joining the party and dancing the finest Charleston any of the attendees had ever seen.  And so they beat on, boats against the current, borne ceaselessly into the past.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, I revamped a lot of this story before I posted the final 2 chapters, so there are actually a couple new bits sprinkled throughout.
> 
> So here's this whole fever dream in its entirety.


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